Discursos sobre emoção entre atletas olímpicos brasileiros

Abstract

In this article, I discuss how the analysis of discourses on emotion produced by both sports athletes and the media construct or reinforce power relations. In order to do so, I resort to a pragmatic approach to emotions as proposed by Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod, which treats emotion as socially and contextually constructed, rather than as an element of "human nature" that coould be expressed through or controlled by culture. With this analytical approach, I focus on the media (television, press and internet) coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, so as to show how discourses about emotions in sports, produced or reproduced by the media, reinforce unequal power relations. They appear in references to a sort of ranking of nations in terms of their degree of civilization, strongly influenced by an view that links emotional self-control with the civilizing process discussed by Elias, to an association of a "natural" emotionality in women and their greater need of external control or still to an acceptance of this emotional control in paraolympic athletes.